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This last week has been a real deep breath holder for the United States and the world.
Some saying it was the worst visit to the bring since 1929 which lead to FDR and his First 100 Days in 1933, that “saved capitalism in seven days” and gave us the reforms, regulations and agencies (FDIC, SEC, FSLIC, etc.) to keep the financial community and economy on a stable growth graph line.
This worked well until the late 1980s and the savings-and-load debacle of Lincoln Savings and Loan owned by Charles Keating of Phoenix and involving Silverado Savings and Loan in Denver in which Neil Bush was a director plus 469 others costing U.S. taxpayers $124 billion in a resolution trust fund bailout. This debacle was made worse by five U.S. senators, the Keating Five, who intervened with the Home Loan Bank board to block regulation of out-of-control lending. The Keating Five included four Democrats and one Republican.
It is the Republican that is of concern to us today. He now talks about his being a reformer who will destroy the old boys club in D.C., stop corruption and solve the banking crisis of today and talks about how he opposed they lobbyists and their gifts and donations. His name is John McCain. The following is a quote form Wikipedia.org:
“McCain and Keating had become personal friends following their initial contacts in 1981, and McCain was the closest socially to Keating of the five senators. Between 1982 and 1987, McCain received $112,000 in political contributions from Keating and his associates. In addition, McCain’s wife, Cindy McCain, and her father Jim Hensley had invested $359,100 in a Keating shopping center in April 1986, a year before McCain met with the regulators. McCain, his family and their baby-sitter had made nine trips at Keating’s expense, sometimes aboard Keating’s jet. Three of the trips were made during vacations to Keating’s opulent Bahamas retreat at Cat Cay McCain did not pay Keating (in the amount of $13,433) for some of the trips until years after they were taken, when he learned that Keating was in trouble over Lincoln.”
Now McCain after fumbling all week on the economy and his votes to deregulate banking, with his economic advisor Phil Graham, wants to say that Obama caused this crisis by being in bed with Freddie and Fannie taking contributions. Yes, he did get employee contributions, but McCain’s contributions came from the directors and execs and were seven times those of Obama. Look at McCain’s record above, is he a reformer and a maverick? The Daily Sentinel wanted Charlie Rangel to resign, and what he did certainly is not what we want, but it pales next to McCain’s 1980s record (and 1980s dollars) and he only got a slap on the wrist. Keating went to prison.
LARRY INGRAM
Grand Junction
3 Responses to “McCain tainted by association with Keating”
Posted September 28th, 2008 at 10:05 am Login to Send PM Report this comment
Great, here we go again…now, the Obama haters will dredge up his associates, and we’ll spend another thread fighting about whose connections are more evil, or more ‘radical’..
If anyone thinks McCain knew that Keating was going to destroy millions of people’s lives when he went to bat for him, they’re fools.
If anyone thinks Obama is a closet “radical” or “America hater” because of his associations, they’re fools as well.
Politicians, by their nature, have to associate with all kinds of people. Some turn out to be worse than they’d like.
But if you can’t find any real malfeasance from either candidate, as I think is the case in this election, then you have to start widening the scope for attacks.
And I know, partisans from both sides are going to get snide, because I just don’t realize how bad the Other Guy is.
Posted September 28th, 2008 at 11:22 am Login to Send PM Report this comment
Curmudgeon is correct in his assessment, but this is nothing new. In fact, an entire industry has grown up around it. It is called ‘talk radio’, something to which far too many have become addicted. It is a a ‘for profit’ industry based mostly upon emotion alone, and most of their hosts are grossly ignorant as to issues and lacking in the intellectual maturity required to handle them intelligently. Looking at some of their statements, several should probably be in jail for formenting hate, bigotry, civil unrest, etc.
A classic case is none other than the ‘god’ of the field for so many, Rush Limbaugh, and his “Operation Chaos”. He admitted, and publicly, that his objective was to cause civil unrest in Denver during the Democratic National Convention. If that is the case, the individual is guilty of a crime.
Then we have none other than Bill O’reilly who, in referring to an issue before us, used the phrase that it was “threatening the white christian superstructure”. We can look at that and conclude that Mr. O’Reilly is therefort little more than a “white christian supremacist.”
Finally, we look at the former icon of the same genre, Ann Coulter. Her statement was that there was nothing ‘wrong’ with Jews, only that they had not yet been perfected. That, by any standard, is saying nothing more than so-called “christians” are superior to Jews or, not as ‘perfect’ as ‘christians’. So, that made Ms. Coulter, by any standard, a supremacist.
Such tactics can only work with those who have neither the intellectual nor emotional maturity to be responsible citizens. The have never bothered or made the effort to acquire either of them. As a consequence, they are easily herded, and not led (being ‘led’ implies conscious choice), by the emotional nose.
Posted September 28th, 2008 at 5:17 pm Login to Send PM Report this comment
If this is a political weakness when why does Obama not exploit it? Ever hear of Rev. Wright? All of these folks have some skeleton in the closet some further back than others. There was a discussion concerning Biden’s charitable giving, or lack of it, in the Friday paper. Sounds like he could play Scrooge in the next production of a Christmas Carol.
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